The funny part about this joke is that Leno probably wasnt even thinking about the fact that the poorest people, the ones who we should supposedly be handing even more money too according to democrats, tend to be the ones who spend the MOST on lottery tickets.

Infact i saw an article the other day that said people earning less than 15k per year spend 10% of their income on lottery tickets, and they wonder why they are poor....

Here it is, my numbers were close, its actually 9% of their total income for people earning less than 13k per year.

That means the very people who democrats think we should feel sorry for, essentially pull 10$ out of their pocket for every 100 they spend and burn it.

These people never stop to consider the fact that if they were to save the 1300 per year, they could atleast pay to go to some kind of technical school after 10 years, and its very easy with the government to get loans for school, if you are motivated, so they could quintuple their income with a little work but they would rather buy lotto tickets cause they are lazy.

Households Earning Less Than $13,000 A Year Spend 9% Of Their Income On Lottery Tickets*

According to a 2008 study, reported by PBS, households that earn less than $13,000 a year spend a staggering 9% of their income on lottery tickets. (via Scott Heiferman).

That's 9% of an income that is presumably extraordinarily hard to live on to begin with.

Rich, educated people tend to ridicule lottery players because the odds against winning are so astronomical.

As PBS points out, you are 17-times more likely to get hit by falling airplane parts than you are to win the lottery.

And you're 50-times more likely to get hit by lightning.

But poor people keep on buying lottery tickets.

Why?

Because they're stupid?

That's the popular explanation, at least among rich non-lottery players.

But the more accurate explanation is probably that having any chance at radically improving their circumstances is probably better than having no chance.

In any event, the fact that households that earn $13,000 or less spend 9% of their incomes on lottery tickets raises a few questions.

First, are those households receiving money from the government in the form of food stamps, tax breaks, or welfare?

If so, is it really fair to spend taxpayer money on lottery tickets? Is that what the folks who support assistance to poor households expect the money to be spent on?

Second, given that lotteries are primarily used to generate revenue for states, might it not be fairer to just collect the revenue directly, as taxes?